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On a trip to Fordingbridge one day we decided to go home via Braemore and Downton and on the way call in at Hale, whose name comes from 'halh' and Old English word meaning a corner or nook, to take a few photos of the village as it lays North east of Fordingbridge and is a lovely area of Woodland by the River Avon. The village has parts of it that are now decreed to be of Special Scientific interest and within its boundaries is Hale House which is a grand 18th century Palladian mansion which can be seen at the end of the long drive through an avenue of trees. This was the country house of the architect Thomas Archer who was responsible for designing the rebuilding of Hale Church in 1717. The centrepiece of Hale is
Hatchet Green which was given to the villagers by the Parish Council
in 1975 because nobody could trace a known owner, and just in case one
is found at a later date the council exercised a type of guardian ship
of the area which guarantees some protection over the years. But then
they found that they could not enforce their own local government
orders as they were not the owners and this led them give formal
notice that the y would seize the green and hold in perpetuity for
benefit of the inhabitants of the village. The interior of St Mary's church at Hale
The green has various species of trees that include oak, ash, birch, holly lawson cypress chestnut and hawthorn, and south east of the green is Hale Purlieu situated in natural forest which is an area of heath and valley bog with typical flora and fauna within the perambulations of the New Forest
The green has some handsome dwellings surrounding it some of which are thatched an at the eastern end is a circular mound which is thought to have been a Bronze Age barrow called Windmill Ball, but there is no record of any mill being here. At the western end there is a cottage with dormer windows in its roof of thatch, this was once a Dame school which was a school more or less the same as an infant or primary school today. And there would have been an elderly lady in charge and who collected a small fee every week but the children received hardly any education. Literacy was greater in the 17th century that it had ever been in Tudor times and was still rising.. There is a poem written by Thomas Shenstone in 1742 called The School Mistress and describes exactly a dame from a school of this type "A matron old, whom we Schoolmistress name". The famous writer, Charles Kingsley, in his The Water-Babies, describes a much nicer scene when Tom is offered shelter by "the nicest old woman that ever was seen" who cared for "neat rosy chubby little children, learning their Chris-cross row." St Mary's church is beyond Hale Park House and here lies Thomas Archer an architect of great skill for it was he who designed St John's in Smith Square London and the the north front of Chatsworth house.
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